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At Least 26 Claimed Galaxy Note 7 Fire Reports Were Untrue, Samsung Says (zdnet.com)
Lately, a lot of behind the scene conversations have been suggesting that perhaps the Note 7 battery explosion fiasco has been blown out of the proportion. There's no evidence of any of that, so we won't discuss it any further, but amid all of this, Samsung has confirmed that at least 26 explosion reports that circulated everywhere were hoaxes. From a ZDNet report:Out of the 26 reports, the South Korean tech giant said that in 12 cases they found no fault with the devices. In seven cases, the reported victim could not be reached and in another seven incidents, the consumer cancelled the report or alleged that they threw away the device. In the US, where 1 million devices were recalled, nine such cases were reported. There were three in South Korea, two in France, and one each from the UK, Canada, Singapore, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam, Croatia, Romania, Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE, and Czech Republic. In Korea, a worker at a convenience store alleged online that their phone exploded but Samsung said the person was currently unreachable. The user in Canada used a picture they found of the Note 7 catching fire and posed it as their own, the company said, and in Singapore, a user claimed they threw the handset out of their car when it caught fire but could not show proof.Makes you think doesn't it?
Shockingly, we are unable to contact this person whose primary communications device has exploded.
And it also turned out that some of the explosions have to do with idiot users buying cheap as shit chargers with bad or no resistors.
Of all things to cheap out on, the power equipment.
But because all sites need their good boy points with Apple so they can get exclusive coverage and free products, it's been a witch hunt against Samsung.
The ironic difference between Samsung and Apple here?
Samsung recalls shit when it breaks even with small numbers.
Apple waits a year to just start considering a repair program for many trashcan pros with faulty and broken AMD chipsets in them, or tell you you are holding a phone wrong.
Tech journalism needs to die.
I KNEW this was totally overblown. I have had my Note for weeks and am using it now. It hasn't had ANY issu
A few of the supposed victims managed to be reached, and they wanted to make clear that their device did not in fact explode nor did they get paid not to talk about it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Not much of a surprise, we see this sort of thing with any widely reported issue with a specific product. History is rife with examples of mass hysteria, combined with users/owners trying to blame their mistakes on the manufacturer.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
That 12 is not all the devices. They're saying 12 of the 26 were not faulty, and they go on to mention other sections of the 26 that had other issues.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I read it as:
(12 examined the allegedly faulty device and found no fault) + (7 unreachable users) + (7 cancelled the report or threw away the device) = 26 fraudulent claims
This signature is false.
This summary is nonsense. Just because there isn't video evidence and a credible witness, and just because people don't like to answer their phones (that's pretty common nowadays), that does not mean the reports are made up. It means they might be made up. Huge difference.
How many reports were there? Showing me that 26 are likely false doesn't mean much if there were over 100 to begin with whereas if there are 30 then it's likely that there's no problem with the phone. Numbers are only useful when taken in context.
Not unlike the recent rash of "but, but, it was the AUTOPILOT" claims from Tesla drivers after the first story broke.
I sincerely doubt Apple sees Samsung as a competitor. Basically everyone in Apples target demographic has an iPhone at this point.
Victim blaming is one thing, but this is the kind of asshattery that makes you suspicious of everyone.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Some people complained their Note 7 did not explode. They're called terrorists.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
There is no reason to believe consumers are any more ethical than corporate suits. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Indeed. Politifact should change their icon to a Galaxy 7.
Table-ized A.I.
So why claim it did happen, if there's not proof? I mean, no proof that Apple users have bought and deliberately destroyed their Samsung device to cause sales of the G7 to crash just before Apple bring out their new phone doesn't mean it didn't happen, right?
Except of course it does mean that we can't make the accusation.
In both cases.
12!=479001600
ftfy
It is unwise to ascribe motive
While I can believe that some people have indeed suffered from device fires or possibly even explosions, we've already seen plenty of cases in the past where people blame their own misconduct/error on a popular defect, such as
* Telsa "autopilot"
* Toyota unintended acceleration
* etc
While those both had legitimate cases, there were also a number that were simply people trying to get out of blame (i.e. for causing an accident with their own behaviour) or make a buck (lawsuits).
in another seven incidents, the consumer cancelled the report or alleged that they threw away the device.
Why would they throw away a burnt hunk of metal? They should have kept the smoldering remains!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People are idiots. Some want attention. Some want ad revenue. Some just are bored or something. This kind of thing always happens. It surely happens to Samsung's competitors too. It definitely happened to Toyota during the Prius acceleration scare (and surely Audi too so long ago).
You shouldn't take all reports as gospel. This shouldn't make you think, you should always be thinking.
In the end what really matters is whether Note 7s were experiencing battery fires at a higher rate than normal. And the answer still appears to be yes, clearly yes. So Samsung did the right thing with the recall.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've been saying from the get go that most of these stories had to be fabricated. There's probably one or two legit cases of overheating, causing a fire. But there's simply not enough energy in one of these batteries to explode a car. It makes no sense. Further, these devices go through rigorous MTBF accelerated lifetime tests. The failure rate is known ahead of time to within a few per million. They know they'll never get it down to zero, so they find a threshold they think everybody will be OK with and shoot for that.
The problem is now, with Facebook and the 24-hour news cycle, the few actual failures out of the million devices will "go viral," and everybody freaks out. People have no understanding of statistics, so they have no way to deal with it. I think these are the same people who go buy a lottery ticket when the news runs a story about PowerBall being at eleventy million dollars. They don't understand that the odds dictate that they are not going to win the lottery, and their phone is not going to blow up.
This innumeracy has real ramifications for public policy makers, too. Police shootings are comparable to previous years, yet people think there is a sudden spike. Kidnappings are rarer than ever, yet moms are afraid for their children "in this day and age." People just need to chill out.
The bigger question is why you would throw away a $1000 device that was clearly faulty. Does everyone really have that kind of spare cash to say - meh, it's broken after a week, guess I'll just go buy something else.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm sorry, it's too easy. I just can't.
X-D
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
In Korea, a worker at a convenience store alleged online that their phone exploded but Samsung said the person was currently unreachable.
Maybe unreachable because their phone exploded?
Well it costs $900. If you throw it away, you have a 100% chance of getting $0 back. If you keep it and turn it into your cellphone provider or Samsung directly, you have a 100% chance to get your $900 back, or your destroyed device exchanged for a new one without the defect.
So idk. Throw away that 'burnt hunk of metal' if you want. I'd prefer not to squander my $900.
there is a burning object that happens to be with you in a car driving at considerable speed. What do you do?
Throw it out of the window and call the fire department. Which most likely will include an investigation why that something caught fire. At least here they can charge you the costs if it was your fault ...
...to see if it will stick. Kudos to their PR department, they're trying to minimize the problem. It's all bullshit though.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This sounds like something from a text adventure game.
Hmm.
>undo. undo. undo, undo, unplug phone
*Error, object "phone" not identified
>unplug note 7
*Error, "7" does not make sense in this context
> unplug Samsung Galaxy Note 7
*I don't understand what you are trying to do with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7
> remove Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from car
*Detaching the charging cable first
*Rolling down window first
*You fling the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from your vehicle, injuring a pedestrian. He shouts for help and other bystanders begin talking on their phones
> continue driving
What's supposed to be wrong with it? Other than the extra "the" at the end, it looks perfectly correct to me.
Well okay, I'd hyphenate "behind-the-scenes" as well, but I don't see anything deserving of mocking their language skills.
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They found no fault in 12 of the devices... because the user was holding it wrong.
I think you're right on point, and the implication is that they threw it away to dispose of evidence of faking the explosion.
I got better...
It's easy to twist perception when you provide a statistic without the context necessary to understand it.
For instance, saying that 26 reports are hoaxes makes it sounds like the issue is being massively overblown in the media. But we know from other reporting that Samsung has received at least 92 reports in the US alone . And according to the summary, only 9 of those 26 "hoax" reports originated in the US, so if we just take the numbers at face value, it would suggest that at least 90% of the reports are NOT hoaxes.
To say the least, putting it in that context paints a very different picture.
And that's before you even start to look at what they've deemed to be a "hoax". If you do so, you'll realize pretty quickly that what they've actually done is identify 26 cases that may be hoaxes. A more accurate way labeling of their numbers would suggest that 12 of the 26 worldwide reports were verifiably not the phone's fault, but that the remaining 14 were unverifiable one way or the other. Beyond that and you're starting to ascribe intent, rather than sticking to the facts.
If we want to get a better sense of what's actually going on, it makes sense to exclusively limit ourselves to verifiable reports. If we start by assuming that 12 of 26 is a representative approximation for how many reports are verifiable out of the ones Samsung labeled as "hoaxes", then it would suggest that roughly 4 of the 9 "hoax" reports from the US are verifiable and 5 are unverifiable. That leaves us with 87 reports (i.e. 92 - 5) that should be verifiable one way or the other, of which 83 (i.e. 87 - 4) would be verifiably accurate. Given that 1M units were sold in the US, we can say that the verifiable failure rate to date is 83 out of every 1M, with that number likely rising over time as more verifiable reports come in.
Unfortunately for Samsung, that number is WELL beyond the 24 out of every 1M estimation that they publicly stated a few weeks back, so it should come as no surprise that they'd be trying to put a positive spin on things.
And, of course, an easy way to put a positive spin on things is to throw out some big numbers in a vacuum and hope people don't ask too many questions. Which is what they seem to be doing here.
Makes you think doesn't it?
No, I'm an American, and in America no one can make you think. F-F-F-F-REEDOM!!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The classics never get old. Suck it sonny!
I'd agree that the comment comes off as redundant and unscholarly, but there's nothing wrong with it from a grammar standpoint. "It" is the understood subject of the first clause...although there should really be a comma before "doesn't."
Just what is it that is supposed to make us think?
It should be blindingly obvious to anyone that it refers to the preceding summary. Reading between the lines, claims of falsified reports are supposed to make us think about how much mass recalls are due to hysteria vs. actual issues.
There are other problems with the summary, though. I did a double-take on
Lately, a lot of behind the scene conversations have been suggesting that perhaps the Note 7 battery explosion fiasco has been blown out of the proportion. There's no evidence of any of that, so we won't discuss it any further,
when I hit
but amid all of this, Samsung has confirmed that at least 26 explosion reports that circulated everywhere were hoaxes.
So there's no evidence of it being blown out of proportion...except for this evidence that we're showing you right now. And we "aren't discussing it" here, somehow?!
Normally I would never say this, but in this case the summary would be better off as just an ungarnished blockquote. So I suppose you're right.
And finally, there's the part where "we couldn't easily and immediately obtain proof it happened" somehow translates to "they were lying and it didn't happen." Wow.
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The Prius acceleration hoax turned out to be exactly that. Some complaints were found to be operator error. At least one was a deliberate scam attempt. The rest were based on not understanding the two braking systems.
Nevertheless, Toyota paid up to make it go away rather than fight each one separately.
Well, I know that Woz had a Prius with the problem; and he was able to repeatedly get it to do the uncontrolled acceleration thing by a (IIRC) specific, easily-repeatable sequence of gear-shifts and brake applications.
On my computer at home I've got the email reply he sent to me when I asked him about it (after his experience was reported in Slashdot).
So, stick that "hoax" bullshit up your ass. Woz was reportedly able to make it exhibit the uncontrolled-acceleration bug anytime he wanted.Toyota wasn't interested when he contacted them about how to "make it happen", BTW. Instead, they used the fact that the accelerator/brake position data wasn't being logged correctly by the car to convince the NHTSA that it was "Driver Error". Despicable.
As evidence of purchase and the presence of a major fault, yes. Precisely.
When you have a car crash, do you not take photos? Record the names and addresses of witnesses, and the registration numbers of vehicles involved, even if only trivially? The simple failure to do such things is in itself something that an insurance investigator would take as a priori evidence of fraud and use it as justification for a deep investigation of the claim.
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